Joined at the Hip? Joint Strategic Needs Assessments, the Voluntary and Community Sector and Lessons in Partnership Working

Andrew Kaye and Tara Melton from Royal National Institute of Blind People look at what Joint Strategic Needs Assessments mean for public health Why have not-for-profit organizations turned to one another to share tips on the most practical routes for influencing Joint Strategic Needs Assessments (JSNA)? Are we beginning to see a growing public interest in JSNA, or at least their potential to highlight and address the diverse health needs of whole populations? Based on recent evidence, that could be the case; the question then is what does this mean for shaping public health? Original guidance on JSNA stated that "community engagement is an essential element of JSNA...the process, will in itself, have a positive impact on health and wellbeing".1 Unfortunately, four years later effective engagement with the voluntary and community sector remains an aspiration in many areas.2 It is also unclear whether voluntary organizations have the tool sets and resources to engage with JSNA joint health and wellbeing strategies (JHWS) and shadow health and wellbeing boards. Last November the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) came together to host a workshop on influencing JSNA in collaboration with the public health NGO Forum.3 Colleagues from organizations as diverse as Age UK, Action for Blind People, Action on Smoking and Health and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents all took part. What became immediately obvious were the varying levels of confidence in and preparation for engaging with JSNA. The value of JSNA JSNA were originally designed to lead to stronger partnerships between communities, local government and the NHS. Now they have an enhanced role; a critical function of JSNA is building a unique "picture of place". A JSNA must make links between determinants of health, through telling a story about a community; its people; its assets; and the health challenges that still exist. Only when a JSNA does all these things can it help inform a decent JHWS and focus on the wider determinants of health. JSNA is not in and of itself a tool for tackling health inequalities or improving health outcomes. Groups that were once neglected but now seek a higher profile for their health and wellbeing priorities nonetheless view JSNA as a useful stepping-stone. JSNA represents an effective vehicle for raising awareness of various groups' health and wellbeing needs. Lessons from the sight loss sector RNIB together with its partners on the UK Vision Strategy4 have positioned ourselves as sector leaders and have started to dedicate more resource to engaging with JSNA. Early results are very promising in terms of increased recognition of eye health and eye care within many local JSNA. However, bringing the needs of people at risk of, and living with sight loss to the attention of JSNA leads, not to mention seeing this data used to then guide investment decisions, was certainly not straightforward. Undoubtedly one of the most useful things RNIB did from the outset was to commission research on the future costs and prevalence of sight loss. It was very well convincing ourselves that tackling avoidable sight loss was a moral imperative, but unless the economics stacked up, it was going to be difficult bridging the voluntary-statutory sector divide. …